


The Shrines of Janus

by EgregiousDerp



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (This is what happens when you don’t deprive a Whill of his Walking-Stick.), All Is As The Force Wills It, Based on the Extended Weapons Stripping trope, Battlefield Borking, Baze is wary of cats bearing extended metaphors, Baze the...?, Chirrut the White, Did you ever hear the legend of Baze Malbus the Incredibly Uneasy?, Does everyone live? No one Knows., Extended religious overtones because I’m me., I guess this is a soft Lord of the Rings reference AU, If we likesssssss it then we putssssss a ring on it, Implied Instantaneous Reincarnation/Regeneration, M/M, if you thought corpse-sitting was bad then how about Corpse Voyeurs?, ”You wouldn’t deprive an old man of his walking-stick?”
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 12:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12581440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgregiousDerp/pseuds/EgregiousDerp
Summary: He remembers the feeling of Chirrut ceasing in his arms, the kyber of his fallen staff gone silent.There is no way about it.The Force sent Chirrut back in White.





	The Shrines of Janus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peppermintquartz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermintquartz/gifts).



> So Quartz up there wrote me a gift found HERE ( https://a-kent.tumblr.com/post/166985802895/surrender-your-weapons ) and this happened in exactly one sitting with minimal read-throughs.
> 
> Quartz.
> 
> Buddy.
> 
> You can’t just send me something cute, leave me emotionally compromised by getting a gift at all, and then say “okay but it’s close to November, so bye.”
> 
> BUDDY.
> 
> Also everything I touch turns to sinister and angst. Sorry about that.
> 
> Happy Halloween.

The blueish ichor of the corrupt Patriarch Xylos arced across Chirrut’s temple, smeared just under his eye by a careless hand, a dab under his chin where he’d scratched with his thumb.

Chirrut, as per usual, didn’t seem to notice, busy pushing the body off the throne, and into a pose of supplication, so none of the children of Xylos would misinterpret and consider the odious man a martyr.

He has already pocketed the ring, which has caused such sorrow to the faithful of Kafrene. He will offer it to the rightful heir of the Ninth Priesthood tomorrow, as his birthright. Or, perhaps, being Chirrut, he’ll toss it in one of the city’s torches on the way out of the stronghold and listen to it sizzle and pop and melt, and that will be the end of the line of the Nine Rings for good.

Chirrut Îmwe, before death was a simpler man in many ways, Baze reflects. Chirrut Îmwe after, dubious messenger of the Force, and Manifestation of its Testimony to a Universe in perilous loss of Balance, is less simple and more...energetic. He was zealous before death. He is more zealous still after a miracle.

_Handsy_ too, if he’s honest. And Baze is nothing if not honest. If he were not honest he would not have torn his robes of the Whills in grief. He would not have fought the Empire almost as bitterly as he fought his own faithful husband, and as he fought the Force.

The Force has perhaps given something back to Baze for even the smallest return to faith, in his case. But years of sardonic doubt and defiance have etched themselves hard enough into him that he has to reflect the Force was still incredibly _foolish_ to send Chirrut Îmwe back to the domain of the living, clad all in _white_.

Years by his side already have Baze remembering every trick and technique he knows for removing organic stains from cloth and leather, rubbing balefully at the streak of coppery blue against his husband’s temple.

If he knew, Chirrut would only find newer and more creative ways to ruin everything put on him.

And yet-

The Force knew his every weapon, Baze thinks as Chirrut works to dislodge a line of garrote from under his backplate with energetic little jerks, not a single one missing beneath his scorched armor, the red burned away by pain and by fire.

He remembers the Darkness which took him, and the first new breath and gasp of life as he coalesced back into being and memory, waking on that beach and thinking only of Chirrut, _Chirrut_ -

Who was not in the sand where his body had been left, pain and despair cutting tears down the grime of Baze’s cheeks as he screamed to the Force wordlessly to let him know what had taken his body and where he was laid, what beast had surely eaten his eyes and torn the soft flesh to take sustenance from his husband’s empty shell.

He remembers the hand clamping over his mouth and the indignant whisper, “ _do you want the entire Empire to know we are alive?_ ”

His tears of grief turning to tears of joy, of clutching and ragged breathing, leaving handprints of soot on the white of his robes. Sobs of his Chirrut’s name.

He remembers dying. Intimately. He remembers the feeling of Chirrut ceasing in his arms, the kyber of his fallen staff gone silent. He remembers Chirrut dying.

There is no way about it.

The Force sent Chirrut and it has sent him, though Baze still questions if he wants to believe in a thing like this at all. Resents, even in the face of miracles.

Honest, Baze may be, but he also knows when it’s better to deflect. He has more of a mind for what he’s potentially sitting in, trying to keep as much of Chirrut, with his dragging white hems off of the ground.

That should reassure him, really, the existence of his weapons in all their various hiding places. And of Chirrut, who still knows them all blind, pulling spare charges from here and there, peeling away blasters, knives, stun grenades. Layers he’d only just put back on himself.

It does _not_. He will not be won over to the Force’s whim by the hands of his husband.

Chirrut has long had the privilege of Baze’s trust, and of peeling away his weapons and layers one at a time until Baze is left vulnerable. Chirrut’s hands on his at all at this point are nothing short of a miracle, like the tiny all-Black lothkitten Baze pulled from the ashes of the home of one of the penitents of Kafrene, its rasping and choking in his hands almost drowned out by his own grasping in rage and pain for the tendrils of the Force.

And the Force... _answering_.

He does not know what to make of the tiny life that should not exist, hidden and curled beneath his clothes, or of Chirrut’s laughter as he held the tiny, creature high and named it.

Baze is too well trained in the mysteries of the Force not to be afraid of what that gift might mean, too well-informed not to see omens in every step.

Even without religion he steeped himself in superstitions of Luck. He knows Luck’s boundaries.

Baze reflects though, even under those hands, that the Force sent them both. And if it sent Chirrut in white, then the two-sided Force must have meant him to be no less It’s ambassador. No less in accordance to its purpose. Just as he once knew and dragged his hand along the cold stone of the Shadow Wall in meditation as a young man.

Baze wraps harder around Chirrut and lets the other man leave a vicious mark on his skin with his teeth, fingers gripping him tight enough to bruise—both things that have only ever made Baze go pliant and still, reminders he can feel, and needs to feel. Testaments of belonging.

Galaxy, the kitten, sleeps and grumbles, folded away in a soft little ball of black beneath Baze’s char-stained jumpsuit.

The Way of the Whills taught balance in the aspects of the Force, he knows.

Baze remembers dying, in dreadful, breaking speed, and fire, in his armor, surrounded by all the weapons he’d put on, in tremendous pain.

He remembers the shock of Chirrut’s teeth on their wedding night, more than thirty years ago.

(All but _one_ weapon the Force Remembered. The most important. The only weapon he’d put his hands on when Cassian had called them to take all they could carry. _Chirrut._ Chirrut...)

He remembers Chirrut’s slack face staring up at nothing on the beach, and his desperate prayer of grief and despair to please, if he was to go, to let him go to where Chirrut was, for he could not bear to be parted.

_Attachment_.

The Whills do not forbid the Dark Side.

The Guardians of the Whills serve the Force in all its aspects. But to walk in one aspect over another is to walk a cold path without light.

It protects in brief. Consumes in the long run. Brings fierce joys and great sorrows, both wilder things than the peace of the Light.

The Light was Chirrut’s hand in his in meditation as a boy. The Dark, the thrill of his teeth in his skin. The flickering, joyful violence of him that Baze loves and loved and loved.

They took his weapons at the door, the guards did, staring at him like he was some demon from the Hells of Iago, with his long hair, his dirty face, his clothes still stained black by soot and smoke. He reflects on this as Chirrut gnaws at his ear and wrenches the stun baton up his sleeve out and onto the ground with a clatter. The blazing, bright sparks of pain and pleasure.

They tried to take anything he could use, the guards did. But they left Chirrut free, armed and deadly and beautiful with the blinding white of his remade robes catching every scrap of light beneath the drab cloak he’d put overtop of it like his radiance could be dimmed or hidden, like it ever could.

...There’s an analogy there Baze doesn’t even have to search deeply for.

A prophecy perhaps, if he were bolder or capable even now of more hope and less fear.

He is barely capable of that. Barely capable of more than holding onto Chirrut with his two hands. As desperately as Chirrut snatches for him, grips at him, seeks him out.

The Force moved darkly about Chirrut Îmwe in this place, even radiant and clad in white. And Baze was with him, _longed_ for him, feared for him, would have sacrificed all for him, felt him as surely as he does now in his embrace, with Chirrut pushing his hands, guiding them underneath his robes in his relief.

The Force sent two. It did not send pure embodiments of one or the other, but two sides of itself nonetheless.

Chirrut who has always needed and yet let go when it was time to walk, when something higher called to him and told him to leave Baze behind. And Baze...

Baze, who...

Baze can’t finish the thought of what he is, buries his head in Chirrut’s neck instead as Chirrut shudders above him.

Don’t they both need one another? Haven’t they always? The Force hasn’t dictated that. 

Baze has had years of crippling attachment and affection and thwarted sorrow to learn how to touch Chirrut Îmwe with even just a single hand, and comfort himself with the desperate joy of another. Remade hands which should by rights be ash and charred meat, blasted fragments of flesh and bone across a beach.

They work in all the ways his hands did before he died, though he doesn’t want to think too closely of what they might be made of, remembering the tiny animal life flickering out in his fingers and the way he felt the Force respond to the wrenching tug of his rage and grief as it never did before.

Before.

Chirrut’s fingers tighten around the back of his neck, clinging to Baze, riding his thigh without shame, not oblivious to the fear in Baze, but unsullied by it, little comforts of his fingers stirring against Baze’s neck and cheek. Waiting for him to emerge from his thoughts, to hide himself in Chirrut and console himself with him as he always has.

He is dressed in White, like a sacrifice, but clings even now to Baze, pulling off his armor, his weapons, his coverings piece by piece even though Baze doesn’t intend to let him last long enough to be anything less than a giving, a sacrifice of his own. A testimony to the power of attachment like lightning not under his skin, but under Chirrut’s. Like power, power he would give to Chirrut so he would never suffer, never want for anything, would exist untouched by pain or anger or grief, in blind bliss.

Chirrut’s leg twists, fighting for purchase on the uneven, dirtied stones. He catches on his staff, and it rolls a bit away.

“Hah. You’re an old man alright,” Baze mutters against his ear, rolling his eyes.

Chirrut huffs a laugh.

“Almost as old as y-“ he cuts off with a curse. “ _Baze!_ ”

His indignation turns to laughter and then to a contented groan, nose buried against Baze’s temple so he can hear him breathe and sigh.

Chirrut’s hands unclench, arms wrapping more gently around the back of his neck, elbows resting on his shoulders. He buries his fingers in Baze’s hair, carding through it, smelling it. Shivers. Whispers his name again, more reverently.

Baze presses his mouth to the line of his husband’s jaw, and feels the burning Destiny of the ring in his pocket, the changes they will decide for the shape of the Galaxy together.

It is the way of the Light to give and to yield, even at cost to itself, Baze thinks. And the way of the Dark to attach.

Chirrut’s remade body is different, and Baze’s heart twists knowing he must not ask too much, must not direct his anger at the Force, for changing Chirrut Îmwe, in even the smallest things, like the loss of the red flash of his sash about Chirrut’s waist, the bleaching out of their history together for the Force’s inscrutable purposes, the silver which stole away the lush dark cap of Chirrut’s hair. He must not be angry that Chirrut’s body gives more easily.

And why?

Chirrut has long disliked gentleness, giving to the point of recklessness, so his giving took on points of selfishness. Why would the Force make any bit of him more pliant? More yielding? Why would it change him when he was _perfect_...?

He does not know. Fears each change wondering if it will drive them apart as Death did not, as remaking did not.

Baze, even in his grief and anger has always been gentle with him, has known his resistance. Has always wanted more to wash the blood from Chirrut’s hands and quiet his stony insistence that _All Was As the Force Willed It_. As if the Force drove Chirrut to kill simply because that blood, that weight never seemed to stick to him as it did to Baze.

Baze’s resistance to this idea, his wresting away of death from anywhere close to Chirrut Îmwe...

He thinks, even now, of their home on Jedha, and Chirrut’s hands in his in the rusty water of the basin, the hands he loved as though they were his own. More than his own. Hands he has always wanted to keep clean, washing the blood off them, soothing the bruised knuckles.

Chirrut pants above him, blood drying on the side of his cheek, blind eyes the Force didn’t see fit to fix dazed beyond coherent thought. He whispers Baze’s name again like it’s a mantra in its own right.

Baze pulls his free hand around a wrist, thumb in the hollow of a palm, dragging the backs of Chirrut’s fingers down his face, before the sightless dead, before the closed ways.

Chirrut is clothed in light. All around them there is war, and some purpose he can’t guess at, some insidious thing that has let Chirrut exist in his gleaming white and brought back Baze in smoke and darkness, to touch him and to love him as desperately as he always has. A destiny he fears, since this can only be the beginning.

“I’m here,” Baze whispers. “ _I’m here._ ”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on tumblr at “EgregiousDerp” for more incoherent fumbling, and bad headcanons whipped up at four in the morning in the hopes they find a good home.
> 
> Drop me a line.
> 
> Really.
> 
> I’m terrified of people and will likely expire on the spot and/or write a fic because I’m too scared to talk to you directly.
> 
> What could possibly go wrong?


End file.
